The possibilities of changing not just our clothes or styles, but our bodies as well has turned into a constant obsession in the last few years. Those who can afford and want to push things further can turn to plastic surgery; most of us use instead clothes and accessories that can help us sculpting our bodies in the shape we desire.
But those ones equipped with advanced technical skills can introduce us to entirely new digital shapes and silhouettes best explored in virtual spaces. A group of students has just been doing that at the "Computational Body Architecture & Digital Fabrication" course, a new addition of Beirut's Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA).
Taught by French-Lebanese architect and fashion designer Maria-Thala Al-Aswad, who has been developing for ten years now studies and explorations in digital fabrication, the course attempts to bridge the gap betwen fashion and architecture in innovative ways.
To explore the main theme of the course - "Otherworldly/Body Mutations" - students of different disciplines, from fashion and film to architecture, teamed up in pair or in groups of three to ponder about physical and mental transformations. In just a few months they designed imaginary garments, hybrid constructions that reshape the body or that help it to adapt to the new life challenges ahead.
Some of them created biogarments, combinations of flora and fauna, and presented them in a digital space suspended between a gallery and a video game set ("Biogarment" by Ram Zein and Rayan Gholam); others moved from modern challenges that have had an impact on our minds and our mental health - from Coronavirus to the Beirut blast last August - to develop garments that represented the emotionally confused condition of the wearer and maybe mark a path towards a healing process ("Frénésie" by Lynn Khoury and Nour Mouawad).
Waste and the detritus of modern lives provided studies on materials resulting in body assemblages and textural clashes ("Detritus Consciousness" by Juliano Fakhry and Tia Bou Khalil), while the fascinating stages of the trasformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly led another team ("Trans-mue-tation" by Ghassan Beidoun and Juliette Osman) to wonder how to develop a series of designs, one containing the other.
A study on the evolution/devolution of our back and curvature combined with three-dimensional surfaces found in everyday objects like egg boxes prompted others to experiment further with bumps and lumps ("The Growth" by Yara Saidy, Christelle Farhat and Maribel Nasr), while the architectures of Isaïe Bloch inspired an architect and fashion designer duo to find a way to integrate solid structure into delicate draping ("Processing-Decay" by Alexis Hajji and Jana Rizkallah).
All the projects were surprising and unexpected considering the short time the students had to develop them and the Coronavirus restrictions and lockdowns that kept them apart.
Their moodboards and presentations were also rich, at times incorporating fashion stories and pictures - from early futuristic images of flight attendants in Pucci's space bubble-shaped helmets to high-tech designs by Iris van Herpen, combined with vintage images of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
All the projects can now be viewed in an online exhibition in a virtual space on Frame VR where visitors can also meet and chat with each other or with the students.
What will it happen to the students' projects in future? Well, some of them may be scaled and resized to create jewelry, accessories or even assemblaged works of art, but the most important part of the project is the fact that the students worked together, discovering each other's modus operandi and techniques - learning from different disciplines and skills, from architecture and fashion to film, from stitching to developing algorithms and using Grasshopper. So, is a new body possible or is it possible to find new ways of fabricating it in a digital world? Probably yes, but what's more important is to do that in a collaborative and stimulating environment, as course leader Maria-Thala Al-Aswad explains us.
Can you introduce us to the course and tell us more about its genesis?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: The Computational Body Architecture & Digital Fabrication course aims to place the students' multi-disciplinary know-how and backgrounds in a specific context - "Body Architecture" - that is, the emerging body scale in architecture. The students explore in this course the potential of networking in parallel the fashion and architecture disciplines in a digital studio, in which they can use computer technologies and advanced manufacturing tools crossed with the methods of reflection and execution of couture to achieve 1:1 scale clothing prototypes.
Do you feel that the fashion and architecture connection has evolved in the last few years and, in case, does this course represent this evolution?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: Over the past two decades, a new relationship has emerged between architecture and fashion. It is no longer a theoretical link, or a resonance of style or form. The innovation is in a new discipline breaking the rules of the art of the two fields. Architects are making fashion through new digital technologies and architectural fabrication or construction. What is specific to architecture and fashion is materiality; otherwise, 3D animation designers do the job very well in term of imagination and 3D modeling, like in the "Avatar" movie in 2009, for example. The new research field is to transform these improbable forms and ideas into real wearables with new materials and production processes.
Is this the first time the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) in Beirut organises such a course?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: Yes, it is and it is also the first time it is organised in Lebanon and in the Middle East. I think ALBA is the best place to create such synergy between students from all the school departments. It is one of the rare places grouping schools of Architecture, Visual Arts, Decorative Arts, Cinema and Audiovisual Directing, Urban Planning, Fashion Design, English and French Writing. For this first edition of the course, we had students from the Architecture, Fashion, Cinema and Audiovisual Directing schools.
What prompted you to come up with this theme – "Otheworldly/Body Mutations"?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: This course is the result of 10 years of research and self-development in the field of "Body Architecture". Since my participation in the "Building Fashion" and "Post-McQueen Embryos" workshops organized by the AA visiting school in Paris, I never stopped researching about the idea of using architectural skills and logics and apply them to the human body and wearables. I explored many 3D tools and machines to create my own projects and became familiar with many processes and scenarios. Then I met the right persons at the right moment and in the right place and took the leap and wrote an educational syllabus. The pandemic accelerated the process as we collectively realised there is a need to change and revolutionize the wearables industry. After 2020, the "Otherworldly/Body Mutations" theme became almost obvious for me: the human body has faced several challenges, we have been through health, social and economic crises, in addition to the huge explosion of the port of Beirut, which was a specific challenge for Lebanese citizens.
In which ways do you think the “Otherworldly/Body Mutations” theme relates to our lives and times?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: I have always kept in mind Michel Foucault’s words about living forms that can pass into each other, and that current species are undoubtedly the result of old transformations. The current circumstances, such as wearing masks or over-using thumbs to switch on smartphones, can accelerate and lead the mutation to future developments. We can expect, for example, more transformations in ears, jaws, hands and backs than other parts because of our new lifestyle and environment. For instance, our bodies' expressions might become exaggerated for a better communication with each other, since our mouths and noses are covered by masks.
Which were the challenges that these students had to face?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: With hindsight and now that the course is over, I would not view the challenges they had negatively. In life there's always a first time and I would rather describe these challenges as a succession of "firsts" for them and for me, in a very short time span. The total course sessions came to 26 hours (two hours a week), in which they had lectures, tutorials, project sessions and reviews, with no physical contact or access to the school workshops or even the cafeteria. While the lack of sociability affects the students' morale and therefore their creativity, there were also many positive aspects of distance learning, such hosting "online"’ international tutors and lecturers like Filippo Nassetti from MHOX Design, Aleksandar Bursac from Zaha Hadid Architects, and jury members like you, Anna Battista, as journalist and fashion critic, artist and engineer Horst Kiechle and up-and-coming Lebanese fashion designer Roni Helou. This was absolutely enriching and inspiring and the students felt encouraged and pushed forward. I would say that the prototyping part was the biggest challenge and was unaffordable for some projects, as there is a lack of materials and machines because of the economic crisis in the country. However, this pushed them to think about alternatives and find alternative solutions.
Which aspects of the fashion and architecture/digital experience do you think they found more engaging and which ones do you think they found more difficult?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: Generally, they are very comfortable when it comes to design, images, storytelling and beauty. What was new for them is to think in "constructible" terms. With this expression I mean adapting the design, exploring different methods and tools, thinking geometry, searching for materials and machines, and studying budgets.
In which ways did they surprise you?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: The distance learning and the interdisciplinary semantics generated some positive misunderstandings and therefore surprises. The most surprising moment for me was when a group of Architect and Audiovisual students came with a unique analysis of the ideal body or silhouette from Rei Kawakubo’s point of view, and how they used it in their 3D modeling and general concept. One other surprise is how another group expressed the psychological confusion people are going through because of the pandemic and the Beirut Blast in a very precise way, but, in turn, I could also detect this confusion in their own work and process. All these observations were very interesting and touching.
You put together a virtual exhibition collecting the end of the course works, can you tell us more about it?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: The online virtual exhibition is on display in a very minimalist space with positive summer vibes. We wanted to assemble the variety of approaches and processes of the students' projects in a simple and efficient way and make sure their work reached out to as many people as possible, so we used Frame VR. You can explore the exhibition space at this link.
Most fashion shows moved to a digital space this past year because of Coronavirus, do you feel that the virtual reality exhibition organised for the students reflects this trend as well?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: Yes, of course, but the main difference between a digital fashion show and this virtual exhibition is the possibility of moving freely in the space around the 3D models instead of watching a digital animated video. The other advantage is the possibility of interacting and gathering with other visitors. People can talk to each other via microphones, see the presence of the others via webcams and use the chat window. This is therefore a fun experience. I think all these technologies became a necessity after the pandemic lockdowns. The crisis gave humanity a big push forward to invent tools that can help to keep our work, creativity and sociability as active as possible.
How long will the exhibition be available and is this a way for your students to reach out to other students and institutions and interact with them as well?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: The exhibition is online throughout the summer 2021 so students can, as you said, interact with visitors and use the space to show their work and even organize virtual events or interviews in the space.
What's in store for this course?
Maria-Thala Al-Aswad: I have many plans, themes and adaptations for this course, and I hope that this edition will be a starting point for many collaborations in the future. From my point of view, this was a very enriching experience that pushed forward my own thoughts and ideas and, hopefully, it will inspire me some future projects as well.
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